Concert Review: Modest Mouse

Iowa is weird. In some places, there are cool things; in most places there aren’t. Tonight, a cool thing was in Iowa City (at the University of Iowa): Modest Mouse played. And, as long-time readers might have already known, I was there.

They were pretty good. They played an interesting set of songs — very heavy on the new stuff, which I wasn’t too excited about. I’d have rather heard more from The Moon & Antarctica, but I guess they have to hawk the new album. And hey, that’s what the high schoolers who were at the show because they heard MM on the radio wanted to hear when they got their parents to buy them tickets.

Happily, they had new arrangements of most of their songs. Their performance of the smash hit “Float On,” for instance, sounded different enough that musically inept MTV2 viewers couldn’t sing along too obnoxiously. I reserve obnoxious singing rights for myself. And their performance of “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” was probably most remarkable for how much it has changed: I counted eight people on stage performing it (which means two tambourine-playing roadies are getting laid tonight!), and their musical precision was impressive.

But the crowd sucked, and the opening acts (especially the one directly preceding Modest Mouse) had no business on the stage.

In case you’re wondering what other concerts I’ll see in the next few months, here are some names:

• Cake
• Gomez
• Prefuse 73
• The Books
• The Killers
• Brother Ali
• Treologic